Micro CoGen.

I have a lister LT1 from a '70's highway arrow sign trailer. Got it years ago. Nice little single cylinder air cooled diesel. Electric start. Don't remember which build it is, but they put out up to 7hp@3000 rpm. Some builds were governed at 1,500rpm and 1,000rpm with lower output of course.


This one ran a 60A alternator that kept a single 12v battery charged to power the incandescent light board.

I thought it would be perfect for keeping my deep cycle battery bank charged at the cabin in the fall when the solar system performance drops off.

It wasn't. Noisy as hell and the single belt slipped badly. Added a dual belt system which worked great until the alternator burned up shortly thereafter. This happened years ago before I found Micro CoGen and all the info about 110-555 alternators with balmar regulators.

The good news is the lister is still sitting under the cabin right where I abandoned it. Time to give her a second chance.

This time around after fitting a proper alternator and regulator I need to build an enclosure for reducing noise, then figure out the cogen part.

Cabin is fairly remote so I'd like to keep it as simple as possible.

Anyway, I don't see any mention of the Lister LT1 here. I think they are worth a look. Parts availability is still pretty good. Engine is equipped with a decompression lever. Cold starting aid is a small plunger that adds oil to the intake to increase compression.

That's all I've got. Now off to research cogen options for air cooled engines....

The car battery is 30 kWh. The trick is finding a way to pull power back out of the car. In Japan nissan offers a consumer vehicle to home system that allows power to flow in both directions. Works good for peak load shaving or powering the house during an outage.

Of course it's not available in the US. some other companies are working on similar tech, but they will probably require a grid tie.

Right now there is a Chinese made V2H box available for a couple grand that looks like it will work. Not a bad way to go considering a Tesla powerwall cost $7500 and only stores 13.5kWh.

I definitely plan on doing cogen with the Witte. Should be able to collect more than enough WVO here to make it worthwhile. I'm the only hobbyist in the village that cares about this stuff.

Another advantage here is we are free to collect anything from the dump. You would not believe what gets thrown out here. Outside contractors don't want to pay freight to haul leftover supplies back to the mainland. I've collected miles of wire, pipe, fittings, etc.

Just have to be patient. We call it dump shopping. Already have most of what I need to finish this project on site.

This is a great place to live, except the winters a bit dark and cool. Be a lot better with a warm brightly lit shop to tinker in

So the idea is to use the electric car to commute back & forth between the house and shop. It's ideal because the 2.5 mile trip is too short for our truck to even warm up. Very hard on the engine and it wastes fuel.

Car is on the solar "trickle charger" at the house. When I get to the shop it would be nice to plug it into another charger powered by the Witte or lister, possibly integrate a V2H system so the car battery would power the shop when needed.

Then when I need to run the generator, the car charger would also help put a proper load on the generator and keep it happy. Especially when running WVO.

The property also has some interesting hydro potential. A nice pond site at the top that could be developed as a sort of water battery. I could then open the penstock while at the shop and dump the hydro power into the car.

New member here. I've noticed there are a lot of knowledgeable people here with wildly different ways of solving a given problem. I would love to get some opinions on how you would set up my proposed project.

We live up north on an island. Grid power here is .65 cents/kWh and unreliable. We are a cruise ship destination and in the summer there is a gondola they operate that causes brownouts.

Our home in the village has a grid tie solar system that we use to charge a cheap electric car. Works great in the summer with our long days.

We recently bought some property for a shop that's 2.5 miles from our house. This property doesn't have grid power and I'm ok with that. The plan is to provide our own.

The options:
Good southern exposure for solar (summer only)

Seasonal micro hydro, about 450w or so.
 
Free WVO.

I have a Witte CD gen set, and a Lister CD with electric start that needs a generator head.

To be continued...

What an amazing project!

Any progress updates?

Years ago I made some airboat rudders out of almuninum ribs with sheet metal skin attached with pop rivets. Don't really have any construction tips to pass on. Those rudders were simple curves. I later repurposed the rudders into a motorcycle side car. Its as tough as hell. I wouldn't count on your blade skins flying off in a storm..

Finally, are you really building a wind generator? Or a wind-powered kill dozer?

Anyone that hasn't heard of the legendary kill dozer, do yourself a favor and look it up.

The nozzle on my CD is stamped DN4S3 02.

Very good information Tom. Thanks.

My sales brochure lists your BD as 5.4KW, 9hp @ 1,040 RPM. I wonder how my CD would run with that Chinese injector nozzle?

Yes the parts situation is unfortunate. Especially the rare fuel injection pump.

I've got a good source of WVO, but don't want to risk damaging my fuel injection until I can find a spare.

I was talking to Steve Perks from Stationary Engine Parts about possibly adapting a more common injector pump to the engine. He said I should try and find a BPF1A or FA0AB style pump with an 8mm element.

A quick web search for those came up empty.

Anyone here know of a source? Any other ideas would be appreciated. I don't mind making an adapter if necessary.

Last summer I was given a complete Witte CD-14 engine-generator unit. It came with a sales brochure, care and operation manual for both engine and generator, warranty papers, and a bill of sale.

The unit was purchased from NC Machinery in Juneau, Alaska in 1974 as a reman unit for $4,235. That's $23,037 in today's dollars. Pretty steep price for a rebuilt unit!

Sales brochure claims "continuous duty operation in excess of 30,000 between major overhauls is the rule, not the exception". Seems promising.

It also states the condenser cooling system will permit continuous operation for 90 days without adding coolant. An optional lubricating oil reservoir with float valve allows unattended operation for up to 90 days.

Anyway got it running after unsticking the pump element and injector nozzle. Didn't run it for long because I'd like to go through it before putting it back in service here on the island.

The file of info also contains some old hand written notes of various parts suppliers. There is one in Washington state that interests me. Doesn't seem to be in business anymore, but maybe a guy could do some detective work and see where the spare parts ended up.